I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately on the matter of prayer. I know it is far more important than it has been in my life lately, and I feel continually challenged. Let me start at the beginning of my journey:
Making the Bible relevant to today’s culture has relatively little to do with the music we sing or the methods we use. Relevant Christianity is believing that the God who involved Himself with the Patriarchs is the same God who involves Himself in our lives today. The Jesus that called and worked in and through the lives of the 12 disciples is the same Jesus that calls and works in and through us today. The same Holy Spirit that made apostles out of common men is the same Holy Spirit that transforms common men into bold witnesses today. This is Biblical relevance: God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Our application of this relevance is found in our prayers. Much of the work God did through both the patriarchs and the disciples was rather unreasonable. Many of the expectations God placed upon His people have been unreasonable. Take a series of miracles Jesus performed: fed the 5k, walked on water, calmed the water, fed the 4k, did many healings therein. But at the feeding of the 4k the disciples still didn’t get it. Jesus says “are you yet without understanding?” Our problem is, we want to understand according to human terms before having spiritual faith. We want some sort of reasonableness in our leap. We want to have a list of ways God could work it out. When the disciples doubted, it wasn’t that they were doubting Christ specifically. They were just thinking with natural minds which naturally doubt what they cannot see. And Christ rebuked them as though they were forsaking the obvious – and they were.
But we somehow justify the disciple-ness of our prayers…we neglect to be bold in asking for unreasonable things. Consider the syro-phonecian woman who asked Christ to heal her child. Christ said “no, the children need fed first. Why should I give to the dogs what is reserved for the children?” But even though the woman agreed that her request was unreasonable – Christ was the Jews’ Messiah. But she still asked, even though 1. Her request was unreasonable, and 2. Christ already said no. She had the boldness and humility to expect Christ to do something unreasonable, even after hearing “no.” This is a faithful prayer. This is a prayer coming from someone who knows far more of Christ than one who can only bring himself to request things that he finds to be reasonable.
Bringing it back to relevance, I’ve been continually challenged that even in my life, no matter how common I am, God is not limited. He still wants us to trust that He is the same God to us that did unreasonable things to those we sanctify in the Bible. They were all common men who would have no place in history if it were not for God’s work in their lives. And we would have no place in His future if it weren’t for His work in us, and because of who He is, we can be free to ask for what is unreasonable and know that He will fulfill it unto His glory. The only two reasons we have not is that 1. We don’t ask, or 2. We ask amiss – we ask stupidly and selfishly. I don’t think God is in the business of saying no all the time. We’re just faithless. We’d see a lot more yeses if we’d just ask and know that God is more desirous of His glory than we are, and more desirous to bring men to Christ than we are. More desirous to build His church than we are. More desirous to build up Christians (like us) than we are. More desirous to build up families than we are. You get the idea. The prayer of submission. Why can’t we even ask for those unreasonable things that we already know are his will? Like for our family to visibly grow in grace? For our local church to grow in grace?
Not to mention (funny…I’m mentioning it) that God rarely does things in a way that we had already mapped out ourselves. This often is a key point on which we lose faith. We didn’t see an answer, so obviously God must be silent, right? Or perhaps you’re not seeing the answer because you’re only looking down one hallway, when God worked it out down another hallway. Instead of listening for Him plainly, we listened for noise in the hallway that we thought He’d do His work in. Even if we hear noise somewhere else, we will not turn to look because of our self-imposed sovereignty. Therefore we never turned to look and see that God did the work somewhere and perhaps somehow differently than according to our prognosis. And sometimes God works in a hallway in a completely different building, so we will never see it. Just because that person didn’t get saved during your time of influence doesn’t mean they’ll never get saved. You just won’t see it happen. We too easily lose hope in what we can’t see. We too often lose hope because we impose our sense of complete comprehension upon a sovereign God.
And sometimes the answer is indeed “no” and will never see a “yes.” Does God not exist? Or does God hate us? No. Rather, though we do not understand why, these times are times in which we are to submit.
Too many people have left the faith or given up on prayer merely because they have prayed falsely. Many nominal Christians have turned atheist merely because God did not answer their impersonal, sacramental, check-list prayer that lacked faith anyway. At least now their claims match the level of faith they always had. Now they can really be reached. You cannot reach someone who thought they already had faith. You cannot redeem those who are already righteous in their own eyes. At least now they are reachable.
But simply, let God be God. You be you. You, as you, come to God through Christ our redeeming mediator, and let Him be God.